With Any Certainty
by MJRmutation
Summary: Post ep for The Squab and the Quail. She thought that she would have to fight him, but here he is, crumbling down in front of her, and because of her. CAUTION! WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR BOTH TSATQ AND STILL!


**A/N: So, I see a lot of people siding with Beckett in the whole squab and the quail thing, but I, like most guys, am siding with Castle on this one. And in this fic, I will show you why. It's yet another post-ep for episode 5.21 (or 5x22) which ever you want to call it, but it's for the Squab and the Quail. WARNING! THIS ALSO HAS SPOILERS FOR STILL! but only minor ones, and one that I'm sure most of you have figured out by now. **

**Anyway, in this fic, since I'm a guy, I will give you a bit on insight into the mind of a male, and what we feel like when we get jealous, and why we get jealous, because being a guy whom is jealous... sucks... badly. **

**Disclaimer: Still not mine.**

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She wasn't going to lie to herself. It felt good to have familiar lips on hers again. As he casually tossed the remote aside, gave her that little grin that he had, and threw his arm around her waist to pull her in close, it felt right, and she wasted no time at all pressing her lips against his and placing a hand on his shoulder to slightly increase their contact. As his lips sat there for a moment, a quick thought shot into her mind, but before she could think to herself whether or not it was a good idea to ask, it was out. "Castle..." She said just under a whisper.

"Yeah?"

Mentally still biting her tongue, she still needed to know. She fought with herself only for a moment before she looked away from his soft gaze. "Where are we going?" He leaned back and took a step back with that same smirk that he had a minute ago, and she knew... she just knew she wasn't getting an answer.

"To the bedroom, come on. You're gonna love this." He turned around and strode into the bedroom he had just beckoned her into and bent down to smooth down the sheet that covered the table he had prepared for her. She knew she should let it go for another time, after all, she really could use a full body massage, especially from him, with how well he knew her body, but she couldn't. For once, her brain was telling her to just get in there and be with him, but her heart was telling her to push him, it was usually vice versa.

Taking a few slow steps as she watched him slowly move around the table and straighten out the sheet at the top of the table, she knew that she had his attention when his expression quickly changed. "Why do you do that?" She asked coldly.

"Do what? Offer to give you a full body massage? I thought you'd like the idea."

"Deflect. You know what I meant, Castle. It was hard enough for me to ask that question, the least you could do is give me a real answer." She was beginning to feel the involuntary twinge of anger seep into her voice, she didn't want to sound accusing, she knew it would only make him close off even more.

"Kate, I'm trying to do something romantic for you, do you really want to do this now?" His shoulder sagged in defeat, and at that, she felt a small itch of guilt at her stomach, but it wasn't enough to get rid of the frustration she was feeling.

"If not now, then when? Castle, we've never... talked about us, about this." She stopped just inside of the bedroom door and held her breath awaiting his answer.

"I didn't know we had to."

"Of course we have to. Castle, I need reassurance here. Is this serious?"

His brow furrowed slightly, with rising shoulders, he glared over at her with a look that she almost had never seen before. "You did not just ask me that." He replied softly.

"Castle..."

"No. Kate, why did you just ask me that?"

"Because sometimes it feels like..." She let the sentence fall flat before she could formulate the rest of it in her head, and moved her gaze away from his hard glare.

"Kate, what am I doing so wrong that you feel the need to ask me that question?" His voice had a new edge to it, but it scared her a lot more. He sounded scared. She looked back up at him and saw that he was. He looked scared, but most of all, he just looked sad. After she failed to answer, mostly because his tone and new expression had left her speechless, he continued. "Kate, if this is because of the way I acted when you were with Vaughn, I'm sorry, okay? I am. It's just when I see him, and I see you, and the way you look at him, It scares me. Because sometimes, I just feel like I'm not enough for you, and when I see you swoon over a guy like him, it only drives the knife further."

"Castle, I told you before. He's not _you_."

"Exactly, he's not me. When I see you and Lanie gush over how sexy his accent is, it makes me think that that's exactly what you want, not me."

She took another step into his bedroom before she broke the heavy silence that had formed over the moment she took to take the step. "Castle, there's a reason I pushed him away when he kissed me." She stopped when his face contoured in pain slightly and he turned away from her. She took the opportunity to take another step closer, still leaving a sizable gap between them, with the table separating them. "He wasn't you, Rick. And no matter how much money some one has, or what kind of accent they have, or what they look like, no one ever will be, okay?" He slumped his head down and placed his hands against the chair off to his side. "Don't you trust me?" It was her turn to sound scared. His head shot up to meet her gaze, he looked more scared than before.

"Kate, I trust you more than anything. It's that I don't trust myself."

"What do you mean?"

He let out a shaky sigh, and she knew she was getting some where. "I don't trust myself to be enough for you. I don't trust myself enough to not screw this up, because if I lost you I... it's hard enough to think that I might lose you to a case, because then I can be there to stop it, but the thought of you leaving me, or some one stealing you away from me it... I don't... trust myself enough to keep you around. Kate, you are... a part of me now. I can't imagine my future now with out you in it. But if I lost you because of something I said, or didn't say, or something I did, or didn't do, or just because you didn't... love me enough, it would..." He let his already shaky voice fall flat. She let his words and broken sentences sink in. Did he really not trust her feelings for him enough? "I know I should have more trust in you but just, the idea of being cheated on again, especially with you, it kills me." This time, his words registered in her head immediately.

"Wait, again?" He looked away from her and let his weight fall down onto the bed with his hands falling limp in front of him, his shoulders still slumped downward in defeat, his head bowed, trying to avoid the looks he thought we was getting from her. After he made no move to begin, she came to sit next to him, and grabbed his hand. "Rick, what happened?" She asked softly, she couldn't decide whether she was asking for her benefit or his, but not wanting to be selfish, she knew that if he talked about it, it would be better for them.

"Meredith. I had just taken Alexis to the park. She was five at the time. We came home early after it had started to rain, and I told her to go up to her room and change. I walked into the bedroom and... there they were. She had cheated on me with her director. I kicked him out, and we got into a fight. I gave her a second chance, because we were married, we had a daughter, but she left me. We made a promise to each other, to be together forever, but it meant nothing to her. She didn't want it, she didn't want me... I wasn't enough for her." His voice had only grown more shaky as he regaled the memory of his first marriage. She didn't know. If she had, she probably would have given more effort into reassuring him that she would never cheat on him, of all people. So, maybe it wasn't that he didn't trust her after all.

"Rick," She placed a gentle hand on his cheek and moved his eyes to meet hers. "you have to know I'd never put you through that. Why do think I would ever leave you?"

"Kate..." He grasped the hand that was resting on his cheek, and brought it down in front of him and clasped both of hers in his. "This last year, for the first time in my life, I have felt really loved, for me, just me. All my life, I've had people reject me when things got too serious. I tried proposing to Kyra and she fled the country, I tried to fix my marriage with Meredith, and she left me. But with you... when you came to me that night, you were soaking wet, you had just quit your job, your shooter had just gotten away, you almost lost your life, and you came to me. You said that all you wanted was me... that _I _was enough for you, just me. You're the first person to ever love me for... just me. And it scares me."

"Why?" She asked with out giving him a pause.

"Because I look at you and... I look at how beautiful you are, how smart, and passionate you are, and I think to myself 'how am I enough for her?'. And it terrifies me that I might lose you because I feel like I'm just waiting for the day that you wake up and realize that you want more than I can give you, just like everyone else did." He broke their stare and let his eyes fall down to the floor. She felt as if she had just torn down his walls, but now that she had, she realized just how much he had suffered over the years.

"Castle, I want more." She quickly replaced her hand back on his cheek and softly guided his eyes back to hers. "Of you."

"What are you saying?" He asked cautiously.

"I don't know exactly. I just need to know that this is going some where."

"Kate, if I had thought you were ready, I would have been down on one knee the night you came to me, but we weren't. I'd have asked you to move in a long time ago If I didn't know how much you like having your own space. I don't want to push you to far, only to end up pushing you away in the process. Kate, I've known for a long time now that you're it, that _this _is it, for me. I just don't want to scare you away."

"Castle, look at what we've been through together. You stood next to me when a bomb was ticking down to it's last seconds, no one has ever cared for me that much before. I wouldn't have said I love you if I didn't really love you, because I do." He looked at her with such love as he leaned in to kiss her again that she let a smile broaden across her face just before their lips touched.

"I love you, Kate." He told her as he set his forehead against hers.

"So, where _are _we going?" She asked again, as she placed her hand on the back of his neck to keep him there.

He pressed his soft lips to hers again before he leaned back and stood up. He gazed down at her with an out stretched hand, silently asking her to stand. She let him clasp her fingers in his hand and pull her up, and pull her flush against his chest. "Forward."

It wasn't much, but it was more than enough. She knew that if he had asked her to move in, she probably would have had to think about it, she just needed to know that this was going somewhere, and that he wanted to it to go somewhere. Because he was a part of her too. She smiled brightly again after he spoke and leaned up to kiss him again.

"So, can I give you that massage now? Because that idea was as much for me as it was for you." He said after she leaned back.

"I'd like that."

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**A/N (You can skip this if you want, it's not important, just a rant.) Since most of the fandom is females, and even more so the writers of fanfiction females, I feel it necessary to give you some insight into the mind of a male. There are three types of guys when it comes to jealousy. 1) the guy who degrades the girl (Common among abusers and womanizers) 2) The guy who degrades the guy whom is making him jealous in an effort to make themselves look better or 3) the guy who degrades himself (myself included). And it's number three which I think Castle is, which also gives me a unique insight into how Castle feels. Being jealous, especially when your type number three sucks, because we feel like you don't want us any more, and just want him, and it sucks, because we also try to convince ourselves that it's not true, but the more we do that, the more our mind tends to focus on the negative. And since Castle has been cheated on, it's highly understandable that he would be insecure when it comes to a guy like Erik Vaughn. And it's not a matter of trust in the woman when it comes to thinking that they might cheat, it's a matter of trust in the guy whose making us jealous, and if I were in Castle shoes, I wouldn't trust Vaugh as far as I could throw him, even though I would want to throw him off of a dam bridge. **

**But, in the few post eps I've read, it's always Castle ending up apologizing, when I think it's Beckett who needs to do the apologizing, especially after I watched Still, because if she is questioning whether or not they are serious after that, then she is blind. And of course she didn't get a straight answer right then. He was trying to show how much he is willing to do for her, he was trying to compete with Vaughn, even though he was out of the picture, he was trying to show her how much he loves her. And I wouldn't want to go into a conversation about our relationship after I had just spent a few hours setting up a massage table, candles, rose pedals, ect. ect., because 1)it would make me feel like it's wasted effort, and 2) if I had just set all of that up, and saw my girlfriend standing in the door way pouting, right after I had just offered her a full body, then I would feel a little offended. Kate was being a little selfish at the end, but she is also kind of blind, and if you've seen still, you know exactly what I mean. **

**Anyway, I could go on and on, but I won't, because this is a one shot, and I want to keep it that way. Thanks everybody for reading. i would have posted this sooner, but I have been locked out of my account since last friday and haven't been able to write. Please let me know what you guys think of this post ep, because I normally don't think of things like this, but Kates actions pissed me off too much to be ignored. **

**~Major :) **


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